Nitzan Perelman Becker

Research

Democracy's Instrumentalization in Comparative Analysis (DemICA) investigates a phenomenon called democraticwashing, the strategic use of democratic language to legitimize measures that, in practice, undermine democratic principles. Much like "greenwashing" disguises environmental harm behind ecological rhetoric, democraticwashing cloaks exclusionary or illiberal policies in the vocabulary of freedom, participation, and equality. This practice lies at the heart of one of today's most pressing societal challenges: the gradual erosion of democracy in regimes that claim democratic legitimacy while increasingly acting against it. But it also points to a longer and deeper tension in which the language of democracy has historically served as a tool of domination, used to justify colonial violence, the silencing of minorities, and the concentration of power both domestically and on the international stage.

To uncover how this works, DemICA compares three countries, France, Israel, and the United States, each with its own way of invoking and performing democracy, and each marked, over the past decade, by political measures that have challenged core democratic values. The project critically examines how democratic claims are mobilized to justify attacks on the separation of powers, the rights of minorities and marginalized groups, and freedom of expression. It builds a multilingual database of anti-democratic initiatives and the discourses used to defend them, then applies artificial intelligence to identify, at scale, recurring rhetorical patterns across thousands of political speeches and parliamentary debates.

The ultimate goal is both scientific and civic. By developing an open-access analytical toolkit, a comparative typology of democraticwashing strategies, and concrete policy recommendations, DemICA equips journalists, policymakers, and citizens with the means to recognize when democratic language is turned against democratic ends. The project directly addresses the pressing societal challenge of building a more participative and inclusive society, and contributes to a more reflective and resilient democratic culture.